Generally speaking, I like to post music of artists here when they were in their peak years. For Orbison, in my opinion, that was the 1960s. Then he spent a long time in the musical wilderness, without much critical or commercial success, before hitting another peak in the late 1980s with a new successful hit single and album, as well as membership in the Traveling Wilburys. Unfortunately, he died of a heart attack in 1988 at the age of 52, cutting his career revival short.
This album takes place during that musical wilderness time, when he seemed to be very out of fashion with the musical trends of the time. But I'm posting this because he was stubbornly consistent, in a good way, meaning this concert from 1975 probably would have sounded nearly exactly the same as if it had been recorded in, say, 1967, except for a few song selections. He kept doggedly pursuing his musical vision, and eventually the rest of the world caught up with him again.
I also like it because it's a single show done for a BBC TV special in front of a live audience, so it has a good musical unity, as well as occasional comments by Orbison between the songs. The one downside to that is that it's relatively short, at only 33 minutes long.
There has been one official, though obscure, BBC album for him, called "Live at the BBC." I'm not a fan of it because it only grabs some BBC recordings here and there. In this case, that album included seven of the eleven performances from this show, and none of the banter between songs. So I ignored that album as a source, and used a complete version I found on YouTube instead. In terms of sound quality, I can't really tell the difference. I think this sounds perfectly fine.
Generally speaking, this is a run through of his best known songs. But it also includes "Hung Up on You," which was his latest single release at the time.
01 Only the Lonely (Roy Orbison)
02 talk (Roy Orbison)
03 Crying (Roy Orbison)
04 Penny Arcade (Roy Orbison)
05 talk (Roy Orbison)
06 Blue Bayou (Roy Orbison)
07 Running Scared (Roy Orbison)
08 talk (Roy Orbison)
09 Hung Up on You (Roy Orbison)
10 talk (Roy Orbison)
11 Candy Man (Roy Orbison)
12 In Dreams (Roy Orbison)
13 talk (Roy Orbison)
14 Mean Woman Blues (Roy Orbison)
15 It's Over (Roy Orbison)
16 talk (Roy Orbison)
17 Oh, Pretty Woman (Roy Orbison)
The cover image is a screenshot taken from the exact show featured here.
This deserves a wider hearing, so thanks for putting it up. Incidentally the BBC cut Hung Up On You when they broadcast it, obviously they thought people would want to hear only the old stuff.
ReplyDeleteYeah, at first I was going to use a version without that song, but luckily I found a more complete version that had it.
Deletethanks. (Glad you're back from your holidays!)
ReplyDelete